{"id":859613,"date":"2026-06-11T10:08:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T10:08:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/859613\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T10:08:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T10:08:21","slug":"james-conlon-takes-his-final-bow-at-la-opera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/859613\/","title":{"rendered":"James Conlon Takes His Final Bow at LA Opera"},"content":{"rendered":"

Veteran conductor James Conlon laughs as he recalls the day in 2004 when his phone rang with someone claiming to be Pl\u00e1cido Domingo. A longtime fan, Conlon has the performer\u2019s autograph from when, as a youngster, he attended Domingo\u2019s debut of Don Rodrigo at the City Opera in New York. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy wife picked up the phone and she said, \u2018It\u2019s somebody joking around saying they\u2019re Pl\u00e1cido,\u2019\u201d Conlon remembers during a recent interview in his office. The space is awash with books, opera scores, and ephemera, including a photo on the wall of Domingo and Conlon attending a Dodgers game. \u201cBut it was Pl\u00e1cido,\u201d he continues. \u201cAnd I said, \u2018Wow, Pl\u00e1cido, you\u2019re really surprising me!\u2019\u201d Domingo offered Conlon the position of LA Opera\u2019s music director.<\/p>\n

Conlon had then recently finished simultaneous tenures in Cologne and Paris; he was looking forward to some rest. And now, after 519 performances of 70 operas over roughly 20 years in Los Angeles\u2014about half of the company\u2019s lifetime\u2014he\u2019ll get it. His final performance will be Mozart\u2019s classic The Magic Flute<\/a> on June 21, after which he will hand the baton to incoming music director Domingo Hindoyan.<\/p>\n

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One of five children born to a freelance writer and a city employee, Conlon is originally from the Douglaston section of Queens, New York. At age 11, he attended a production of La Traviata by the local North Shore Opera with his best friend, whose mother was the founder of the company.<\/p>\n

His early interest in classical music isolated him from his peers. \u201cI felt very lonely, but I didn\u2019t care \u2019cause I was adamant,\u201d Conlon says. \u201cIt was what I loved and what I wanted to do.\u201d In 1964, Conlon enrolled in the High School of Music & Art (now commonly known as LaGuardia High School) in Manhattan. \u201cI remember the weight that fell off my shoulders within the first week of starting classes \u2019cause there were two thousand kids like me.\u201d<\/p>\n

While studying at Juilliard in 1972, Conlon was recommended by legendary soprano Maria Callas, then teaching master classes at the conservatory, to fill in for Thomas Schippers after the conductor suddenly withdrew from a production of La Boh\u00e8me. \u201cShe said, \u2018Take that kid. He\u2019s going to have a great future,\u2019\u201d Conlon says. \u201cThat was the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within months, Conlon had his first paying job, as a conductor on Giuseppe Verdi\u2019s final opera, Falstaff, which he revisited for his penultimate show this May. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1976, followed by positions at Maggio Musicale in Florence, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Lyric Opera of Chicago.<\/p>\n

\"losCory Weaver<\/p>\n

Sydney Mancasola as Pamina and Kyle Miller as Papageno in The Magic Flute, James Conlon\u2019s final production for LA Opera. <\/p>\n

At LA Opera, Conlon aligned with the organization\u2019s efforts to make opera accessible\u2014offering affordable ticket prices and a relaxed dress code. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing elite about me, and I reject the idea that music is for an elite,\u201d Conlon says. \u201cI think we have to do everything we can to continue to chip away at that because it makes people inhibited about entering an arena where they feel inadequate.\u201d<\/p>\n

For his part, Conlon gave free preperformance lectures that shed light on the history and musical context of a production. Beginning in 2007, his annual production of Benjamin Britten\u2019s Noah\u2019s Flood was staged free of charge at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, incorporating singers of all ages and student musicians from the Greater Los Angeles community.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s evangelizing, really using his personal history as an incredible test case of the transformative power of the art form,\u201d says LA Opera CEO Christopher Koelsch. \u201cHe led with expertise but tried to embody the idea of, if you had never had any exposure to the art form, this was a magical portal that you could pass through.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also in 2007, Conlon initiated the LA Opera\u2019s Recovered Voices series, reviving neglected operatic works composed by artists who were persecuted, many of them during the Holocaust. Included in the series were the U.S. premieres of composer Viktor Ullmann\u2019s The Broken Jug in 2008 and Alexander von Zemlinsky\u2019s The Stigmatized in 2010. William Grant Still\u2019s Highway 1, USA, staged in 2024, gave the Jim Crow\u2013era composer his first production by a major opera house nearly 50 years after his death.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s mission of inclusion expanded in 2012 with its Off Grand series, highlighting contemporary voices like composer Ellen Reid, whose Prism won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2019. Co-commissioned by LA Opera that same year, Omar made its West Coast premiere in 2022, before it, too, went on to win a Pulitzer for newcomer composers Michael Abels and Rhiannon Giddens.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to be an environment where you can do new works,\u201d says Conlon, though he\u2019s concerned whether audiences attending contemporary productions will also be interested in the classics. \u201cIf you do Philip Glass here, which is very popular, that\u2019s great. But how many of those people will then equally come to a lesser-known Verdi opera, or a Mozart opera like Idomeneo or La Clemenza di Tito, or will they listen to Wozzeck?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"losCory Weaver<\/p>\n

Zhengyi Bai as Monostatos in The Magic Flute, open now through June 21. Below, Alexa Ho, Elle Thorman, and Clark Chua as the Three Spirits.<\/p>\n

\"los<\/p>\n

Cory Weaver<\/p>\n

Like theatrical venues citywide, LA Opera has faced cuts over the years, reducing its record of 10 main-stage productions in the 2006\u201307 season to 5 in 2025\u201326. While the decrease might indicate waning interest, the numbers are deceptive. Last spring, the main-stage revival of Glass\u2019s Akhnaten was profitable enough to add performances, as was the current production of The Magic Flute by director Barrie Kosky, returning for the fourth time since its 2013 U.S. premiere at LA Opera. According to Koelsch, ticket sales before opening night exceeded budget for every show this season except Falstaff.<\/p>\n

\u201cAttendance is not the problem. It\u2019s just that earned revenue is a tiny piece of the pie,\u201d he says. Sixty-seven percent of LA Opera\u2019s income is from contributions, donations, endowments, and corporate sponsorships, with this year\u2019s goal set at $34 million. \u201cI remember before the pandemic we figured out that if we actually charged every person in the auditorium the cost to just run that performance, every ticket would be $2,100.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beginning in October, the new season will include five main-stage productions under Hindoyan\u2019s baton, including solo concerts by sopranos Ren\u00e9e Fleming and Sondra Radvanovsky.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not going to break anything, but I\u2019ll try to expand and develop,\u201d says Hindoyan, who, like Los Angeles Philharmonic conductor Gustavo Dudamel, is a product of the renowned music program El Sistema in Caracas, Venezuela. As the former conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Hindoyan conducted his wife, star soprano Sonya Yoncheva, in Po\u00e8me de l\u2019Amour et de la Mer. He hopes to collaborate with her again in L.A.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we can provide excitement, then the audience and donors will grow,\u201d Hindoyan says of his hopes for LA Opera. \u201cI will try to get to know the community and see what can be done. But I heard from two friends that if I want to set my imagination free, Los Angeles is the place to do it.\u201d\u2022<\/p>\n

\"Headshot<\/p>\n

Veteran arts journalist and four-time LA Press Club winner Jordan Riefe is a former West Coast theater critic for the Hollywood Reporter and covers such topics as performing arts and fine arts. His writing on books, film, and travel can be found in the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, the New York Post, the Robb Report, and other publications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Veteran conductor James Conlon laughs as he recalls the day in 2004 when his phone rang with someone…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":859614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,350671,350672,350673,350674,2961,350675,224,5337,350676,140283],"class_list":["post-859613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-christopher-koelsch","tag-domingo-hindoyan","tag-james-conlon","tag-jordan-riefe","tag-la","tag-la-oper","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-placido-domingo","tag-the-magic-flute"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116730929193824118","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=859613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/859614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}